Cuban War of Independence

The Cuban War of Independence occurred when the island of Cuba fought for its independence from the Spanish Empire from 1895 to 1898. The war, the last of three independence wars fought against Spanish rule, succeeded after the United States intervened in the greater Spanish-American War.

Background
Cuba had been one of Spain's oldest colonies in the Caribbean, and Spain oversaw the rise of a wealthy plantation island through the cultivation of cash crops such as sugar and the importation of African slaves to work on the plantations. During the late 19th century, however, Cuba was one of Spain's few remaining colonial possessions in the Americas, as all of South America and Central America had declared independence and separated from the Spanish Empire. Cuba twice attempted to win independence - in the Ten Years' War and in the Little War, but each effort was resolved through compromise without independence. In October 1886, Spain abolished slavery in Cuba, and black freedmen joined the ranks of farmers and the urban working class. Many wealthy Cubans lost their property as a result of the emancipation of slaves and joined the middle class, and the number of sugar mills dropped and efficiency increased.

At the same time, the exiled Cuban patriot Jose Marti created patriotic clubs across Latin America and lobbied for United States support in liberating Cuba from Spanish rule, although he, unlike some conservative elites, opposed annexation. Marti founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, and he began to mobilize Cuban exiles for an invasion of Cuba. The United States was officially neutral, impounding two Cuban ships as they attempted to smuggle men and guns into Cuba from Florida on 25 December 1894, but the proceedings for a revolution went ahead.

War
On 24 February 1895, uprisings broke out across Cuba, including in Santiago and Guantanamo. On 25 March, Marti presented the Manifesto of Montecristi, which declared that the war was to be waged by blacks and whites alike, that the participation of all blacks was crucial for victory, that Spaniards who did not object to the war effort should be spared, that private rural properties should not be damaged, and that the revolution should bring more economic life to Cuba. Many of the early uprisings, including those in Ibarra, Jaguey Grande, and Aguada, were poorly coordinated and failed, and their captured leaders were either deported or executed. From 1 to 11 April 1895, Major General Antonio Maceo Grajales landed with 22 men at Baracoa, while Jose Marti and Maximo Gomez landed at Playitas with 4 men. At the time, the Spanish garrison on Cuba numbered about 80,000 men, of which 20,000 were regular troops and 60,000 were Spanish and Cuban volunteer militia. Wealthy landowners volunteered a number of their slaves to serve in the militia, and, by December, the Spanish sent almost 100,000 more regular troops to the island. By the end of 1897, there were 240,000 regulars and 60,000 irregulars on the island.

Marti was killed shortly after the landing on 19 May 1895 at Dos Rios, but Gomez and Maceo fought on, taking the war to all parts of eastern Cuba. They forced the civilians to choose sides: those who supported independence would move to the rebel-controlled mountainous areas of eastern Cuba, or they would be summarily executed for supporting the Spanish. The Mambises (guerrillas) defeated General Arsenio Martinez-Campos y Anton several times at Matanzas, and the revolutionaries learned from the mistakes of the Ten Years' War by exporting the revolution beyond the eastern provinces, launching uprisings in every province. Valeriano Weyler was appointed to succeed Campos, and he used periodic executions, mass exile of residents, the destruction of farms and crops, and concentration camps to retaliate against the rebels. Hundreds of thousands of peple were forced into internment in crowded cities or towns, and around 25% to 30% of them died. A total of 10% of the Cuban population - up to 170,000 people - died under inhumane conditions in Spanish concentration camps.

In 1896, another war of independence broke out in the Philippines, causing economic strain against Spain, and the Spanish rejected an American offer to buy Cuba. On 7 December 1896, Maceos was killed in Havana Province while returning from the west, and the Cubans began to run low on supplies, as, out of 71 attempted resupply missions from Cuban exiles or American sympathizers in the United States, only 27 evaded the US Coast Guard or the Spanish Navy. By 1897, the rebels dominated Camaguey and Oriente, where the Spanish only controlled a few cities, and the rebel force of 3,000 somehow managed to repeatedly defeat the 200,000-strong Spanish army. The Spanish were kept on the defensive, and their attempts to calm the situation by replacing Weyler and appointing a new colonial administration in Havana failed to end the conflict.

Spanish-American War
On 15 February 1898, the explosion of the USS Maine (which had been sent to Cuba to protect American citizens during riots) in Havana Harbor, which killed 258 of the crew and sank the ship, was reasoned to be caused by the explosion of a Spanish naval mine under the ship, although it was later theoried that the explosion was caused from inside the ship. Nevertheless, American yellow journalists such as William Randolph Hearst turned the incident into anti-Spanish and pro-Cuban propaganda, and, on 19 April 1898, the US Congress authorized President William McKinley to send American troops to Cuba with the purpose of ending the civil war there. On 25 April, the USA declared war on Spain. US Navy admiral William T. Sampson blockaded several Cuban ports, and, from 22 to 24 June 1898, General William R. Shafter and his American army landed at Daiquiri and Siboney to the east of Santiago. On 6 June, the Americans attacked Guantanamo Bay, followed by an assault on Santiago on 3 July 1898. The Spanish Caribbean fleet was destroyed in Santiago's harbor, but the American advance on Santiago ground to a halt after battles at Las Guasimas, El Caney, San Juan Hill, and Fort Canosa. The Americans and Cuban rebels began a strangling siege of the city, which surrendered on 16 July after the defeat of the Spanish naval squadron. However, General Nelson A. Miles did not allow for the Cuban troops to enter Santiago, claiming that he sought to prevent violence against the Spanish, and the Cuban general Calixto Garcia ordered his troops to hold their respective areas. He resigned after writing a letter of protest to General Shafter, upset at being unable to enter Santiago. On 17 July, Spain sued for peace, followed by a 12 August protocol of peace and a 10 December US and Spanish recognition of Cuban independence.